


Paradise

by Palaiolo



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Fate/stay night - All Media Types
Genre: Babylonia but a bit off probably, Canon Divergence, M/M, Merlin discovers that fascinating sensation called love, Merlin/Gilgamesh - Freeform, Or Merlin has no idea what he's doing but tries to have a good time and Gil is too busy to kill him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:34:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28223946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palaiolo/pseuds/Palaiolo
Summary: Despite having called only for a coworker to keep Tiamat asleep for him, the king has obtained the services of a magician more devoted than he should be.
Relationships: Gilgamesh | Caster/Merlin | Caster
Comments: 18
Kudos: 38





	1. 0

0.

_You, get over here._

It was not quite a picture, not quite a sound, but an impression, caught on the edge of a daydream.

Merlin blinked.

Before he'd had the time to sort out what he’d even heard, he was wrenched out of his garden and subjected to a bewildering tumbling of light and air that ended with him falling forward and just managing to catch himself on his hands and knees on an unfamiliar stone floor.

Ah, I think this is what they call a summoning. 

He still felt as if he was drifting, watching all this from far off, but he figured, seeing as this was some being powerful enough to summon him, putting up the chivalrous servant act first was probably the safest move. So he sorted himself into a courtly bow, offered a formal greeting, and lifted his eyes.

King Gilgamesh expended a second looking him up and down with brisk irritation, then burst out laughing. "It seems I had it in me after all! How foolish of me to suspect otherwise."

Merlin stared dumbly. I think some of my own characteristics had something to do with it, he thought absently. But "Of course," he said, instinctively appeasing as he did his own looking, taking in the other man deemed a Grand Caster candidate, who lived in a time of grandeur Merlin could barely imagine, who sometimes reached out from the past with his clairvoyance, a faint but insistent sense of a presence, wilfully inserting himself into Merlin and Solomon's awareness. 

He was prettier than expected. All delicate features and swift cleverness behind scarlet serpent’s eyes. Merlin knew he was domineering and arrogant to an extreme, but somehow he couldn’t find it in himself to mind. In him, the pride seemed only proper. Well, Merlin had always had a weakness for beautiful things. It was probably part of his nature as an incubus. Emotions were dust in the air, but physical things were immutable, always easy to appreciate.

"Right, now, get out of the way. Now that I’ve managed it once, it’s a waste not to do it again."

"What?"

A hand closed around Merlin’s wrist and flung him out of the summoning circle.

"Ah!” 

Gilgamesh waved him off. “Go wait over there, I’m still using the circle.”

“Eh? Gilgamesh—Your Majesty, that's far too rash! You’re—wait, what in the world?”

Gilgamesh reflexively covered his right hand, but Merlin caught his forearm before either of them had time to think. The hand was eerily dry to touch and had darkened to a shade of charcoal, veins unevenly dried.

Merlin swallowed. "You can't summon any more Servants. You'll have to make do with me." He tried to pitch his voice as lightly as he could. 

"Ridiculous, you're no soldier. Besides, I've enough tools in my treasury to make up for mana deficiency, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

“Then use them,” Merlin said.

Unfortunately that only seemed to annoy him more, and Merlin realized he’d made a mistake trying to order him around within minutes of arriving on his floor. I’ve gotten used to being listened to, he thought. It’s been a while. 

Nevertheless, it’d be too anticlimactic if his summoner dropped dead five minutes after he got here, certainly the Seventh Singularity, so Merlin tried again, this time nudging. “You’re sustaining a boundary around this city, too, aren’t you?”

Gilgamesh just huffed. “I'm called the Master in this situation, aren't I?” he said petulantly. His eyes brightened with childish delight. "Even if I weren't the king, you'd be bound to obey me. What a rude system the shriveled mages of the future have come up with, but I should at least praise them for their audacity.” He pulled his arm from Merlin's grip and moved towards the summoning circle.

"No, wait!"

"Mongrel, should I turn a 'Command Seal' on you?"

"Come on! No one can sustain multiple Servants at once, let alone after—well, bringing _me_ here.” Merlin smoothed his cloak. “And from what I can see of your situation, you've got a near hopeless war on your hands. Surely it's better to reserve your strength?"

Gilgamesh didn't even spare him a glance. "We won’t live that long.”

Merlin drew in a sharp breath.

The king once again raised his hand above the summoning circle. "Tell me, how many Servants make up a Holy Grail War? With the future incinerated, my vision is infuriatingly unclear."

A lie sat on the edge of his tongue. If he can’t see the Grail Wars clearly, I can make him stop before he kills himself, he thought.

Yet. "Seven," he said. Satisfied, Gilgamesh grinned and began the incantation, golden hair flying in the rising wind.

Merlin found himself unable to look away.

Watching Gilgamesh drain himself dry to summon a Grail war’s worth of Servants seemingly just to show he could, he realized that, without understanding why, he believed in him. For all the discouraging words that reflexively spilled from his lips, Merlin wasn’t really afraid for him. Somehow, where Merlin's eyes would usually catch lines of glory and misfortune others called prophecy, he could see no misery bound to this man's future.

Are you a martyr or a fool? A saint or a piper leading us all to oblivion?

Either way, I think I might follow you to the end.

May you show me humanity’s happiness.

  
  


❈

1.

Pain pulsed behind his eyes, but Gilgamesh forced himself awake anyway. The past few months had truly been a frustrating lesson in the limits of the human body, even one like his. A soft voice sounded beside him, then turned insistent. He waved a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I wasn’t asleep, Siduri. I was merely meditating.”

“What could Your Majesty have been meditating on for twenty minutes?” Siduri’s tone was perfectly polite. 

“Matters unfathomable,” he said briskly. 

She inclined her head. “This afternoon’s reports from the Northern Wall,” she said, handing him the tablets. “Lord Merlin is also expected back tomorrow morning.”

“I know.” He clicked his tongue. “What is Ekur doing? This report is hardly enough to feed a pillbug.”

“He must be exhausted, scribes are short. Should I grant him a brief leave to rest?”

“No. What sort of lesson do you want to give them? That mediocre work deserves reward? Don’t mother them. No, send him a warning.”

She bowed. “I also looked into the productivity of the breweries this month—” She broke off when they both caught an oppressive scent of flowers.

From the steps of the ziggurat a clear, fresh voice sounded. “We are reunited at last, my dear king of Uruk! I must say, in the intervening days your beauty hasn’t faded at all, but I wonder if you’ve even gotten up from that seat. Can you still feel your knees?”

Gilgamesh glared disdainfully at his court magician.

Siduri said, “I am glad of your safe return, Lord Merlin.” Her gaze slipped to the fluffy hair at the back of his head, which was in unusual disarray and even appeared slightly singed. She frowned.

Yes, thought Gilgamesh, taking the opportunity to take pride in his eye for subordinates. He is, as you suspect, doing his best to look pitiful. The fool can easily clean up his appearance.

“Servant of mine,” he called out with as much scorn as he could conjure through the fog of lingering fatigue. “Have you retrieved the Tablet of Destinies?”

Merlin took on the look of a wounded doe. “Unfortunately, your Majesty, your instructions were quite unclear. I ended up in a den of flaming…” he trailed off, seeming to fall into inopportune existential contemplation.

“So it seems. No matter, it’ll come back to me at some point. Siduri—”

“King Gilgamesh,” said Merlin. “Surely it must be clear by now that it isn’t more efficient to send me to look for your tablet? You can just send a troop out.”

“Are you saying I’m troubling you? You’re dismissed. Go take a nap or do whatever it is incubi like to do.”

“On that matter,” Siduri added, “We have had reports that Lord Merlin has become rather infamous among the brothel patronage. Complaints have been lodged regarding perfume, floral debris and a mounting bill under the king’s name.” Gilgamesh felt her gaze carefully turn to him.

He only sighed. “Pay it.” He pointed at Merlin. “And you, hold back your flowery nonsense.”

“Sorry, Your Majesty. It just sort of, happens, when I get excited.” The floor beneath his boots was already carpeted with flowers. He sheepishly scratched the back of his neck, and then became visibly upset when his hand came away with soot. 

Gilgamesh suddenly felt incredibly bored. Life was boring. Days were all the same. He couldn’t even tell between the days anymore. Immediately following this he judged it necessary to ameliorate the dissatisfactory situation. “You, incubus.”

“Yes?” Merlin stopped blowing on his fingers and looked up.

A golden portal opened above him and dunked him in water with a great _slap_.

“Ah!” 

_“Hahahahahahaha!"_

The beleaguered magus shook his sleeves and let out a dismayed whine. He was soaked to the bone, an impressive feat given the number of layers he wore. “Your Majesty, I’m pretty sure that only made it worse.”

“Incubus, look at yourself— _hahaha_ , you look like, Siduri, record this, a stinking wet dog sought an audience with the king.”

Looking hurt, Merlin conjured a curious tool that began blowing hot air at the click of a button, and pointed it at his hair. “I do _not_ stink. I smell like flowers.”

“Fool, taste in perfume is deeply subjective.”

“What scent do you like, then?” He fluffed his hair a couple times, but the spontaneous shower hadn’t done much to clear preexisting tangles. His fingers got stuck and smeared with soot.

“That’s for you to deduce. It should exercise your brain cells.” Gilgamesh pointedly turned his attention back to his tablets, indicating the conversation was over. Contrary to sense, though, Merlin sat down on the steps before his throne and started working on his hair.

Gilgamesh didn’t take his eyes off his work. “I gave you the chance to take an afternoon off,” he said calmly, “If you’re going to insist on being in the way, I’ll only find something else for you to do.”

Merlin only hummed in response, combing his fingers through his hair. After a moment, Gilgamesh said, “Try the Cedar Forest.”

“But I’ve only just gotten back. I ran all the way.”

This time it was Gilgamesh's turn to make a noncommittal hum. Merlin deliberately went back to grooming.

“Get going.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I want you to.” He knew it was an uncharacteristic way to word an order. Usually, things simply were to be done, nothing to do with what the king wanted. 

As desired, Merlin tilted his head, watched him curiously. “Or is it actually urgent?”

“You may pick up some tourists.”

“Oh. I’d been wondering when they’d come.”

“I thought you were watching Chaldea.”

“I’m not always paying attention.” Gilgamesh glanced at him. Merlin twisted a lock of his own hair. He said, “Are you looking forward to it? The end of it all.” He gestured. “The tension, releases.”

“That depends on that little mongrel’s performance. A subpar showing will only give me high blood pressure.”

“I’m serious.”

“If you were serious, you wouldn’t be asking that kind of question.” 

“Hm, I suppose. But I kind of am,” he said. “Looking forward to it.”

This time Gilgamesh really looked at him. “Incubus, are you afraid?”

“Isn’t it only human to be afraid?”


	2. Field of Flowers

1.5

They came, a pair of undersized girls puffed up with the fervent hopes of humanity’s last observatory. He fell easier into sleep that night, but to his frustration, the dreams remained the same. The familiar flames, the familiar searing mud, and the grotesque writhing black, chittering and screams. A shape blocking out the clouds. He stood alone…. Or, no…. He strained his eyes, sharp anger pulsing against his temples. Just a little clearer. How do I restrain her? How do I destroy them? Where do _I_ die, let me _see_ — 

All of a sudden the sky lit up, a ribbon of blue carving through the smoke and with it, the soot peeling off shattered buildings. He grew aware again of the feeling of his feet on the stone roof of the ziggurat. Confused, he glanced around, watched with disbelief as the city recovered itself, the mud evaporating with the sunlight that stung his eyes, the monstrous form in the clouds gone by the time he looked back for it. The clay of his city shone golden, whole again.

But it was very quiet.

Silent streets, empty stalls set full of meat and fruit, a palace without sentries. So he knew then that this wasn’t the dream he’d started with, and far from being a future he could believe in, it was merely sugar from the hand of an incubus.

“Why are you interfering with my rest, Magus of Flowers?”

“You’re not resting.” 

He turned towards the voice and found Merlin standing at the edge of the roof. “Mind your tone.”

Violet eyes curved in a smile. “As half an incubus, I’d say sleep and dreams are my field of expertise. And as a shut-in, I’d say I know rest and relaxation when I see it. You’re looking for something. You’re trying to see what Tiamat’s going to do? Anyway, you’re still working, Your Majesty. Siduri will be disappointed.”

“I am sleeping.” Maybe he was losing his mind a little from exhaustion, seeing as he was going along with this pointless debate. But it was a little amusing, that man’s shamelessness. “I’m simply examining our collective future while my body is recovering itself.”

A moment’s pause.

Merlin said, “Can we make a deal, then?”

“How many deals are you going to try to get out of me? I’m already not _supposed_ to leave the throne,” he couldn’t help but sneer at the end.

“Just the two, I promise!” Merlin said, holding up two fingers. “Number two, I ask that you let me help you navigate your visions of the future. That should speed things up considerably.” Silence the scattered screams, dull the scent of burning flesh and shattered clay. He meant that, probably.

“No,” Gilgamesh said.

“Why?”

In lieu of responding, Gilgamesh merely turned and left the roof. He made his way down to the golden-white city. Merlin didn’t follow, but Gilgamesh was certain he was watching.

“Is this what you think Uruk is?” he said aloud, standing in the middle of the empty market. Quiet, clean, waiting.

He crushed the children’s game board underfoot. “If I were to accept your deal, what illusions would you coat my visions with?”

He waited, but Merlin declined to answer. Perhaps he didn't have a way to prove he wouldn’t do anything. Or perhaps he had meant to fool him. Gilgamesh picked a die off the ground and hurled it at the ziggurat. He wandered for a little, and then his consciousness faded as he lost interest, the dream flattening into images, and then nothing.

  
  


❈

2.

When Gilgamesh awoke, he was surprised to see Merlin still beside him, sitting on the floor by his bed, gently holding his hand in his own cool fingers. Not only that, he was giving detailed instructions for market management and repairs to the Northern Wall to Siduri, who was listening seriously.

Once Siduri left, Merlin turned to smile up at him.

“What would you know about running a kingdom,” Gilgamesh muttered.

“Enough to teach Artoria,” Merlin replied. “There’s a reason 'Camelot’ utopian connotations, you know.”

Gilgamesh had another question. “Why double up on that section of the Wall?” 

“Clairvoyance. Unlike you, I have some reserves of mana to let me use it, and I have a very reliable gut feeling thanks to it.

“Which got you locked up in a tower,” Gilgamesh retorted as he swung his legs off the bed.

“Hey, I told you I _chose_ to escape to Avalon.” Merlin conjured a dish of water for him to rinse his face.

“Ah of course, I forget sometimes that you’re stupid.”

Merlin merely shrugged. Gilgamesh ordered him to bless the season’s crop and headed to the throne room.

To his mild annoyance, Merlin’s instructions to Siduri were solid, in fact exactly what he would have done. He hardly pays _visible_ attention to the workings of the city, spending all his time frolicking or bothering me, and yet he has a good enough grasp of them to know how _I’d_ like things done. Is he really wasting energy just _watching_ everyone? Fine, it was helpful, but annoying so Gilgamesh still filed a mental note to berate him the next time he sauntered uninvited into the throne room, then surveyed the reports left to be dealt with. Having some tasks completed only meant time for more, so he quickly set upon the other tablets and gave Siduri an assignment for Ritsuka and Mash.

Later that week, reports came affirming that an unusually large horde of Demonic Beasts had targeted the exact spot Merlin had ordered enforced. Gilgamesh congratulated him and suggested sending him off to the Northern Wall. Merlin cried until Gilgamesh stopped thinking it was funny and decided it was aggravating, and rescinded the decree.

  
  


❈

3.

“What’s this.”

“Ice cream,” Ritsuka was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet when the king held the icy container up to eye level. “I wanted Ana to try some, so I had da Vinci tell me how to make it with the materials at hand and a bit of magecraft—”

Gilgamesh raised an eyebrow and took a taste. Sharp, cold sweetness. He blinked. “This is excellent!” Ritsuka nearly jumped for joy. “Such a sweet could not be more suitable as encouragement for the people,” Gilgamesh went on with building excitement. “A gift from the future indeed! We should have this mass-produced. What goes in it, how’s it made? I taste cream, and what’s this flavor?”

“Vanilla,” said Ritsuka.

“Vanilla, curious, I haven’t heard of that one before.”

“That’s alright, I asked Merlin to grow it for me, Merlin, you can make more, right?”

“But Senpai,” Mash interjected. “Vanilla is a plant from the Americas. Is it really alright to allow it to be cultivated here? We _are_ trying to restore proper human history.”

That dampened the Master’s enthusiasm. “Oh, that’s true.”

“I don’t think it can hurt so much,” Merlin said from where he was standing off to the side with an especially contented smile on his face. “And maybe we don’t have to let Uruk’s farmers grow it. I can make it myself, and say, let it fade into legend once this crisis is over. What do you say, King Gilgamesh?”

“Aren’t you all being oddly squeamish about changing history?” Gilgamesh said. “You set out to 'save the world,’ didn’t you?” He’d finished the cup and now tossed it aside. 

Ritsuka was visibly computing a clever retort when they all paused. A high pitched voice, shrieking something incomprehensible, came closer and closer. Gilgamesh started tallying repair costs. Merlin took a step back. So did the girls. The ceiling exploded into a shower of dust and rubble. “ _GIIIILGAMEEEESH_!”

“Ah, just when the roof had been repaired,” Gilgamesh said. “Some dirty rainwater has leaked in again.”

“Don’t you _dare_ speak of me like that!” Ishtar hollered.

“She self-identifies as dirt—”

“Don’t you dare call me that! I’m serious thi—”

“Who allowed you to interrupt me?!”

“Who allowed you to _tax_ _Mount Ebih?!”_

Oh, that. He didn’t really remember sending out that order, but it was probably a little joke he’d planted to cheer himself up at a later date, so he laughed at her and said, “The world is my garden.”

“Mount Ebih’s _mine!"_ She was more furious than he’d seen her for a long time, her eyes flashing a dangerous pale gold. “Ugh, I give up, I should’ve killed you ages ago! _Maana!"_

A figure leapt in front of him and let the goddess’s shot explode over a shower of petals. Before anyone had figured out what had happened, Merlin had already gathered him into his arms and shot to a far corner of the hall. Gilgamesh stared blankly ahead, at the space where the Chaldean mongrels and that useless goddess had been standing just then. Just—then….

“What do you think you’re doing?!” He flung out an undignified kick, ill-served by the fact that Merlin’s arm was still braced under his knees. This _mongrel!_ Dazed, Merlin seemed to break from a trance, hurriedly apologized, and started to set him down gracefully, but at a withering glare abruptly removed his hands and let Gilgamesh’s feet drop to the floor with a harsh clap of metal on stone. 

Ishtar gaped.

“You—you—?” As she sputtered her brow quickly folded furiously. “Oh, so that’s the type you’re into, Goldie.” She let out a too-sharp laugh and flicked a hand through her long hair. 

“ _What?_ ” He marched back towards the throne as soon as he’d steadied himself, snapping back, “You brainless gnat, have you been stuck harassing shepherds in the countryside for so long that you’re starved for gossip?”

“I haven’t been _harassing_ them! The _ingrates!”_

“Siduri, get me the reports of shepherds’ losses. The accounting should be both tragic and informative. Oh,” he frowned at the goddess. “Can you read?”

“You!” Ishtar raised her hand, “Make! Me!” The temperature of the chamber seemed to rise exponentially. “So!” Energy gathered at her fingertips, _“Mad!”_

Merlin moved in front of Gilgamesh again.

Then, “Eh?” He said, as if suddenly regaining self-awareness. The Gate of Babylon swirled open facing both goddess and magus.

The latter stumbled backwards, sputtering, “Wait, wait, it’s the duty of a retainer to protect the monarch—ah! Eh? _Eeh?_ ”

“What in the,” even Ishtar stopped to sputter in bafflement. “Is this some kind of fet—”

Ignoring her, Gilgamesh planted a foot on Merlin’s back once the latter was cocooned in rather high-quality silk he'd collected at some point. “Fool,” the king said. “I don't know what you’re playing at, but control yourself. Your incapacitation would cause even more trouble than mine. ...Not that this useless brat could kill you.”

Merlin just strained his neck and gave him wide-eyed look, and said, “But you know what I’m playing at. I love you.”

Someone screamed, probably Ritsuka. Gilgamesh kicked him furiously, blood hot with sudden frustration. “Oh, is _that_ it? You _love_ me? Forgive me for not recognizing it when your performance of that sentiment is the most demeaning it can get, how dare you touch me, how dare you presume that I need protecting from the likes of _her!”_ And myself, the conjurings of my own clairvoyance! “What gives you the right?!”

Now Ishtar was shrieking something like the mosquito she was, but in the face of his fury and despite having been kicked hard enough to roll over, Merlin looked unaffected, blank and calm. “I don’t mean to demean you at all. Everyone knows how strong you are, I just want to show you what I can do for you, too.”

Ha, clever. “You don't need to. You have an assignment that’s more important than anything else.”

“I’ve broad attention, I can afford to help you. I may not look it, but I’m as pleasure-seeking as you are, King Gilgamesh. I enjoy seeing you safe, so I’ll selfishly act to keep you safe.”

Gilgamesh gritted his teeth, and managed, “It’s aggravating.”

Merlin looked up at him with wide eyes. “I don’t know what else to do,” he said. “I am afraid. I haven’t been like this before.”

“I can’t solve that for you.”

“You can,” he said, very seriously.

Gilgamesh curled his hands into fists at his sides, tense with bitter frustration. I can’t stay alive for your pleasure, he wanted to say, but those Chaldeans wouldn’t react well if he announced his intention to die just like that. Knowing them, they’d probably try to do something about it.

And the man on the floor before him.

In truth, Gilgamesh found it difficult to put into words the… ambiguity he sensed surrounding Merlin. A cultivated human skin holding an empty heart, as he would readily define himself to those just as inhuman as he was. But he treated Gilgamesh with a boundless, cloying enthusiasm that seemed far too lively to be engineered just from observation. And his declaration. Loud and public and certainly half a stunt to provoke Gilgamesh himself, but some of it was true. 

Gilgamesh found that dangerous in a time like this. 

And it was frustrating that he couldn’t find a way to discourage him, draw him out of the dirty water of emotions he barely understood, because he still needed him.

So there was a silence. Looking a bit left out, Ritsuka stepped forward, red-faced. “Do you want some ice cream?” she asked Ishtar.


	3. Field of the False

4.

“In any case, I’ll be accompanying you.”

“Ah?” Ritsuka gaped.

“Accompanying?” That was Mash.

“Yes, consider it a reward for your service to the city.” Gilgamesh pointed at Merlin and Ana. “I’ve only reserved two travel permits, so you two can stay here. Ana, you’ve been requested at the flower shop. Well, 'if she has time,’ was the note….”

“Ah, yes!” Ana nodded and ran to make ready. Gilgamesh allowed himself a self-satisfied smirk and prepared for the half-breed incubus’s protests to begin.

Merlin watched Ana go, and then gave the other three a drowsy wave. “Safe travels.”

Gilgamesh blinked. 

“What are you going to do, Merlin?” Mash asked. 

“Oh, I’ll find some work to do.”

“Work?” Ritsuka grinned doubtfully.

“Yeah, don’t think we haven’t noticed!” Romani’s voice sounded shrilly out of the communicator. “Whenever Ritsuka and Mash are laboring away, you’re off flirting with some poor girl! King Gilgamesh, can’t you give him some harsh words?!”

“Ehh?” Merlin broke into whining. “Isn’t he already harsh enough with me? I can’t open my mouth before he loses his temper.” He glanced at Gilgamesh, obviously wanting to induce a reaction.

Gilgamesh was already glaring at him, eyes narrowed. After bothering me until I promised you not to leave the ziggurat, why aren’t you making any noise about my going? Or insisting on coming. Just the other day you had the audacity to insist you enjoyed seeing me safe. Gilgamesh would have asked, but Merlin had on an expression of such cultivated flippancy that made it clear he’d just lie or run away in response, and besides, they had to get going before Siduri caught up. 

Your case is shelved for the time being, rejoice. “As if words can pierce that cotton brain of his,” Gilgamesh said. “Hurry up, I don’t have all day.”

So they went.

  
  


❈

4.5

The world spun, he must truly be tired, maybe overexerted this evening, but against them, _of course,_ to be so unsteady even in a dream—sharp pain tore through his chest, he looked down to see a black limb shining with his blood, there was chittering behind him, around him.

Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, so there was the possibility of this, too—

Gilgamesh awoke with a pounding headache and a hollow pain in his chest. The throne room was bathed in pale sunlight.

That’s a garden, he thought. And it was, a garden just past what was usually the entrance of the throne room, a carpet of velvety green dotted with dainty flowers under a dense wall of vines and trees. There was the crisp bubbling of running water. And now that he was really looking, he saw there were flowers sprouting up from between the tiles of the floor. Gilgamesh closed his eyes again, pinching the bridge of his nose. Someone had said that doing that could alleviate headaches. Siduri? His mother?

“You lost consciousness,” said Merlin.

Gilgamesh looked again at the garden and this time noticed him sitting on a fallen pillar half-covered in moss.

“I’m still not awake,” Gilgamesh said, a statement rather than a question.

“I thought I’d bring you here first to calm down a little. “

“I told you to stay out of my visions.”

“I didn't need to peek into your head to see you thrashing about in bed.”

“You were watching me—”

“Clairvoyance! I can't help my Clairvoyance sometimes!”

Gilgamesh stood up, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, but Merlin was definitely owed some form of punishment. The moment he took a step, however, his legs seemed to melt under him. In an instant Merlin was beside him and had wrapped him in long sleeves to let him lean against his chest. It was warm. The scent of flowers washed over him, and suddenly exhausted by thinking he let himself be smothered in the sunlit softness of Merlin’s cloak. The king always deserves comfort.

Then he caught himself.

Comfort makes you attached to a place, a thing. And then you’re trapped. It isn’t that that's undesirable. But there's a time and place. So he thought as he pushed Merlin away from him.

He ran a hand over the stone of the fallen pillar Merlin had been sitting on. “You said you 'brought’ me here. So you already constructed this place.”

“Yes. Knowing you, it was only a matter of time before you’d need it.”

“I don’t need it.”

“You do. Look, even now you’re still pale, could you even think straight in that vision?”

“I know my own strength better than you do, mongrel.”

“No, you’re just insisting on marching on. The world won’t keep indulging you forever.”

“I won’t keep indulging you forever, either,” Gilgamesh said.

That was what finally silenced him, for some reason. Gilgamesh watched him, keeping his own expression as cool as possible, as the other man gripped his long sleeves and then flashed him a gentle smile, and turned away into a cloud of petal dust. 

Just as well you flee. That was a pillar fallen from my ziggurat, even if the building is whole in your false landscape, Gilgamesh said silently. Did you mean to include that little implication of destruction, or did you accidentally think of such a scene as you built that garden? 

I have a guess.

He walked on, through the dream, lifted the guards on his clairvoyance once again, and let the possibilities wash over him, walking. He looked in a different direction this time, and through milky morning light that broke out from gaps in the smoke, he saw Merlin sitting in a ring of flowers.

  
  


❈

5.

“Yes, Your Majesty!”

With Ritsuka and Mash despatched, the magus prepared to follow them out of the hall.

“You, wait.”

He turned. Gilgamesh had already descended from the throne.

“Yes—hm?”

The king glanced quickly around them, then grabbed his shoulder to steer him up past the throne to the opening at the back of the hall. Hand still gripping Merlin’s robe, Gilgamesh eyed him.

Then jumped.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa _aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghh_ — _!"_

“Shut up, _mon_ grel.” His voice hitched a twinge when they hit the flat surface of his Vimana as it streaked out of his treasury just before they would've been splattered over the streets.

“Ohh,” Merlin moaned, cradling his head. “Please. I beg of you. Warn me next time.”

“Haha! In your sweetest dreams.”

“I think I’m bleeding.”

“Splendid. If possible, save that blood in a cup. Perhaps I can distill it into a store of magical energy.”

“As you wish, but heavens, that’s an awfully roundabout way of getting what you could just by—”

“I did _not_ bring you along for anything like that!”

“Oh yes.”

“I didn’t.”

“Mm,” said Merlin. “Where are we going? And by the way, are you sure? I _am_ worried about you, all—”

“The Cedar Forest,” Gilgamesh said.

“—That’s kept you from dying of overwork has….” Merlin trailed off, stared at him. “Why?”

Killing two birds with one stone, he said silently. Aloud, “Wood.”

“By yourself? I meant, why not send someone else?”

“Of course I would, if anyone else was capable of selecting the most suitable timber. You will notice there has been a distinct population decrease since it was last safe to venture too far from the cities.”

They both fell quiet for a moment. Below, the plains zipped by.

“You promised me,” said Merlin. “You agreed not to do anything that would endanger you.”

“I didn’t know you were so lacking in self-confidence.”

“I’m only being careful,” he said, voice soft in the streaming air. “What do you need wood for? I can fetch it for you.” He tapped his head. “You can instruct me.”

“I refuse,” Gilgamesh said flatly.

“Why?”

“It’s not your place to question me.”

“That’s very childish,” Merlin said, suddenly biting.

“Is that so? Then you can go home.” Gilgamesh made to kick him off their vessel. Merlin grabbed his leg and started to glow pink.

It only took a fraction of a second for Gilgamesh to figure out what he was trying to do and be outraged. He shot Merlin off the vessel, hollering, “You dare!”

A few seconds later Merlin rematerialized on the deck in a flurry of pink petals. “It’s dangerous for you to go. Gorgon’s there, not to mention Demonic Beasts. So the responsible thing for me to do, as your court magician, is to take you back to Siduri.”

“Why do you always invoke Siduri as if she’s my mother?” he muttered. “Well, then let me ask you, why didn’t we see you complaining so much when I went to the observatory?”

“That's what you're annoyed at me about? I trust Mash,” Merlin said.

“More than yourself?”

“They’re already entrusted with humanity, I _have_ to believe in them. But in this case, if you're harmed it’s all on me. I’ll have no one to blame but myself and I’ll feel terrible.”

“That's too much pressure for you?”

“I’m a delicate flower. If you stress me too much, I’ll wither, and you’ll have to clean up my rot. Please go back with me, Your Majesty.”

“Ha!” He didn’t deign to counter him.

At last, Merlin seemed to realize he wasn’t to be dissuaded. He moved to a spot where his hair would stay out of his face in the wind and sat down, linking his hands behind his knees. “Well, at least you chose to take me along. I’m glad, you finally trust me.”

Gilgamesh raised an eyebrow. “Finally?”

“Hm? I thought you were suspicious of me, always trying to send me away.”

Gilgamesh lifted his chin. “Don’t assume I can’t tell at a glance who’s trustworthy or not. I’ve never considered it worth my time to doubt you. I send you away because you’re annoying,” he said. 

They landed at the edge of the forest and headed into its depths on foot. Merlin was on edge the entire time, but still he drew his sword out of his staff and obediently felled the trees the king pointed to. Gilgamesh enjoyed the incubus’s expression of almost offended disbelief the first time he loaded the timber into the Gate of Babylon.

“I don’t think anyone would dare guess you'd use it that way.”

“A king should be practical sometimes.”

“What _else_ do you have in there?”

“All the wealth of humanity.”

“....”

“Erase that look from your face, mongrel! Of course I know what I have in my own treasury!”

“That’s cute.”

 _"You’re_ c—” Gilgamesh caught himself just in time. 

Merlin finally laughed, “I do my best! Do you keep blank tablets in there to work when you're not supposed to, too?"

Gilgamesh frowned. Well, yes. "I work whenever I want."

"I knew it." Merlin turned and pointed to a tree. "Hey, that looks like a nice one."

"Don't pretend you know what you don't, this one's better."

They continued like that for a while. Gilgamesh caught Merlin's eyes unfocusing sometimes, and knew he was checking their surroundings. So he wasn't surprised when Merlin stiffened and grasped his arm. "We have to go."

"What do you see?"

But he was late. There had always been too many reasons why Gilgamesh could never set foot in the Cedar Forest.

A cruelly familiar sound. “Why are you here?”

Gilgamesh straightened, and turned. 

Enkidu’s face. Clouded, though, by resentment, fear, anticipation. Just as he’d been on the beach, seeming younger than Enkidu ever had.

A flash of white, Merlin rushed out in front of Gilgamesh, his sword low but viciously gripped, his fingers as tense as every line in his body.

“Oh,” Kingu said. He lowered his head. "You have a guard dog. You are just a frail human who has to be protected, after all.”

“Aren’t you your mother’s guard dog?” Gilgamesh asked idly, though he didn’t step out from behind Merlin this time.

Kingu let out a short breath of a laugh. “Her case is different. If she was inclined to, she could wipe your city off the map, and you with it. Can you do the same to us?”

“Frankly, I could, but I’d prefer my land intact,” he said.

Kingu narrowed his eyes. It seems he doesn't remember Ea, then, Gilgamesh noted silently. My friend, I wonder which memories _are_ carved into your body. 

“Then you’re even more foolish than I thought you were,” Kingu said. “I don’t understand how the previous user of this body ever thought of you as a worthy opponent if you’re so precious about your _land_.”

“Well, I was a good deal more reckless back then.” What do you remember?

Kingu shook his head, his hair catching the sunlight through the dense trees. “That's all meaningless now. All that matters is that you’ve come to this place, and Mother will be pleased if I get rid of you here.”

“You’ll never be able to kill him,” Merlin said tightly.

No, you idiot, don't provoke him! “Get out of my way!” Gilgamesh shoved Merlin aside and swung his axe to deflect the chains that shot towards them. Pain burst in his leg.

“Gilgamesh!” 

“I _will_ kill you!” Kingu shouted thickly. “You're just a weak, pathetic memory—”

"Yes, I suppose I do appear weak in this form," Gilgamesh said. Deflecting another flurry of chains, he drew out a dozen staves and fired them, keeping himself moving in case Kingu tried the same trick he'd used last time. As much as I believe in the memories of that body, your temper really might be the death of me, he found himself thinking. How ironic, it's too bad Enkidu didn't have much of a temper.

What a sight it always was.

Tiamat's son bent over himself like an unstrung puppet and flung out chains from every direction. Even faced with a sky crackling with deadly lightning, Gilgamesh almost wanted to laugh. He didn’t get the chance to, though, as the breath was abruptly knocked out of his lungs by an arm hooked around his waist. He was yanked aside and the dirt by him exploded.

“Mongrel—unhand me!”

“I can’t!” The mage’s voice sounded above him. Then the two of them were enveloped in pink and Gilgamesh lost feeling.

  
  


❈

  
  


When he awoke, he was lying in the grass under a starry sky. His vision spun, but he felt like the pain in his leg had dulled somewhat. His crown and gauntlet had been removed and his head was resting on a white cloak. Where is this? Ah, no matter. “Where’s he,” he said. Irritatingly, his voice came out more faintly than he intended.

“Gone in the wrong direction,” said Merlin.

“I see.”

Merlin continued breezily, “But it’s too bad I’m no good at the healing arts, so I’m afraid your leg will take a while, and some of your own magical energy.” He let the words hang in the air. When Gilgamesh didn’t respond, he carefully laid himself down beside him.

“Why haven’t we returned to Uruk?” Gilgamesh asked. 

Merlin’s hand stopped short of Gilgamesh's fingers.

“I needed to stay out here to keep up the illusion distracting Kingu. It’s far more work outside of dreams. But don’t worry, we’re safely hidden from all else. I'll keep us from being eaten.”

The king made a short sound of acknowledgement and closed his eyes.

“Tired?”

“Of course not.”

“Alright.” Merlin seemed to hesitate, then said, "Do you still love them?"

"Of course I do," Gilgamesh said.

"Oh." It was a very small sound.

"You sound disappointed." 

"I'm not. I'm just wondering how deeply you must've felt grief when they died, since they were so irreplaceable."

"I don't think you need to wonder." Gilgamesh said to the man next to him, “You’re hiding something from me.”

A soft rustling of cloth beside him.

He continued, “About my death and your own hand in it, I suspect.” He opened his eyes and saw that Merlin’s face had rearranged into a bemused, incredulous half-smile.

Will you admit it? 

“Aren’t I allowed secrets?” Merlin said.

“This isn't the first time you've been here,” Gilgamesh said. 

Merlin was quiet for a long time. Finally he turned away. “Yes.” 

“You.” He thought for a moment. “Crossed timelines and took the place of this world’s Merlin in answer to my summons. You came back.”

"Yes."

A cool relief washed over Gilgamesh. As if the last brick had fallen into place, as if the wine was drunk, the bottle emptied, one matter closed, the next waiting in the wings, but not yet a concern. Gilgamesh met those violet eyes.

“Why?”

“You know the answer to that.” His smile for Gilgamesh was gentle, soft.

We failed, your world was burned, you found a spider’s thread. But, the look in his eyes, how he wouldn’t get out of the way. 

“To see you,” said Merlin.

You stupid, stupid dream-eater.

Merlin went on, apparently more willing to say things with some sense now that the truth was out. “So you suspected? Oh, I guess not pretending to be afraid when you said you were going to the observatory was a fatal oversight on my part. It gave you the idea that I might have a way to know where and when you’d be safe, and that thought snowballed. But you still wanted to make sure, so this was a test. You’d never go to the Cedar Forest, ordinarily. So you wanted to see how I’d react to a new scenario, right?” He looked almost _pleased_ with himself by the end of it. 

“And you were exactly as agitated as I feared,” Gilgamesh said dryly. He paused. Then decided, he might as well, if they were going to lay all their cards on the table, admit despite his pride, “I’d also wondered. Why you were so attached to me. You shouldn't have known me, since you’re stuck in the present. There was no reason for you to be so personally concerned about me unless you’d already interacted with me elsewhere.”

Merlin grinned at that. “You’re being awfully modest, maybe I’m just entranced by pretty things.”

“I was assuming you had the capacity for rational thought, mongrel. You locked yourself into a tower and didn’t even bother to tell the girl you raised about how her beautiful country was going to burn, so of course I found your excessive care bizarre.”

"Because I made a mistake with her. I guess I didn't want to face it."

"Oh? Unusual for you to admit mistakes."

"Well, I didn't realize that I'd created the wrong kind of monarch until I met you."

Gilgamesh couldn't help the satisfaction that flared up at that. "Is that so?"

Merlin nodded.

They were quiet.

Merlin said, “I can tell you what will happen, if you like. Ritsuka’s failure at the Seventh Singularity ensured the destruction of humanity in your period, so the distinction between your era and mine ceased to matter. I could see everything. Every factor."

And what can you see now? Gilgamesh said silently. Is your true form still sitting in that tower, waiting to starve, even as you meddle in another timeline? But he suspected he’d only be fed evasions if he asked before the half-breed incubus had been allowed to say what he wanted, so he said instead, “It must have been quite a sight. Very well. Tell me, then.”

Merlin drew in a sharp breath. “You know already that Uruk is destroyed and the very land becomes an ocean of mud,” he began. “Tiamat births gluttons called Lahmu out of her mud and the bodies of humans. Your Servants are turned into her creatures, too. Tiamat cannot be killed while life remains on the planet.”

His voice, so pleased earlier, was cold. Less the voice of a storyteller than that of a mouthpiece of the gods, those prophets and holy men who had been puppets of whimsical omnipotence, before that power faded.

“The goddess of the jungle, Queztalcoatl, is good and defends humanity, but even her foreign meteor can’t harm Tiamat. Neither can Ishtar. Neither can your Dingirs. The Chain of Heaven can only bind her for seconds. 

“You may imagine that she can be destroyed in the Underworld where there’s no one alive, you might even kill yourself to summon the King of Heroes of your prime, to direct Ea at her, but she has no concept of death, and even if she did she can remake the world into one where that doesn’t matter, that’s where it ended. That’s where Ritsuka died. I ran from Avalon, and it didn’t matter.”

The king was silent, the words sinking into his mind, fitting too finely with the images he already had.

Finally, he said, “You’ve said nothing useful. You’re making it sound as if this battle can’t be won.”

“That is the truth I found.”

Gilgamesh abruptly forced himself up. “Then what are you doing here?” he demanded. 

Merlin sat up, too, meeting his furious gaze levelly. “I haven’t given up. I’m saying that the solution can’t be found here, in Mesopotamia, but together we might find it elsewhere.”

 _“Elsewhere?_ You said yourself that failure here is equivalent to the destruction of humanity. You suggest going further into the past?”

“Come to Avalon with me.”

Gilgamesh froze. He thought, suddenly absently, that normally he would laugh at a request like this. What do I owe you, that I should shut myself up in that tower on the edge of the world and watch stupidly as the world burns? Because you’re dreaming, incubus. You live in a prison outside of time, and such a place is no seeding ground for the future.

But the words cooled in his throat, and he said only, “You’re a fool.”

Merlin suddenly pulled him to his chest, burying his face in his neck. “I’m serious,” he said. Beseeching, and his lips brushed Gilgamesh’s skin softly as he spoke. “Between the two of us, and Romani, we can find a way to defeat him.”

“The two of us? How will we survive? Are you going to feed off my dreams for the rest of eternity? Don’t whine. I’m the king. You don’t have any more claim to me than any of my subjects, and I mean to lead them to the end.”

“You’re going to die here,” Merlin mumbled.

“I know. I intend to.”

“To tear the gods from humanity, no matter what happens after.” His tone was almost bitter, so Gilgamesh wrenched a handful of his hair to announce his displeasure.

Suddenly Merlin raised his head. “But you’re no god. You’re human. You’re even more human than I am, despite all your divine blood.” Gilgamesh blinked in surprise at the uncharacteristic earnestness, and his fingers curled into Merlin’s hair.

“You don’t treat humans like weak and dumb creatures meant only to offer gifts and beg to be taken care of, like the gods do, at least not anymore. You laugh, you cry, you feel everything from joy to fury as deeply as any man, you have the temperament of a child—”

_“Mongrel—!”_

“—But that’s only because you live more thoroughly than most will allow themselves to. You have… a sense of yourself. To be the king you must be a brazen model to be followed and admired, and yet still bear the burden of all others.”

His grip tightened around Gilgamesh's waist. “No god has that duty. No god owes anything to any human. No god really sees responsibility as anything apart from a particular function they were born with. But you chose. You choose. And—” He broke off, couldn’t think, it looked like, or couldn’t say, instead he hunched his shoulders and leaned down to catch Gilgamesh’s lips in a kiss. It was soft, quick, and when Merlin broke away he wouldn’t look at him anymore, staring instead at the ground. “And you’re merely mortal.”

For a moment there was silence, broken only by the faintest indiscernible sounds of the night.

At last, Gilgamesh said, “You presume too much, to speak as if you understand me. But I’ll overlook it this once, in favor of correcting your mistaken conclusions.”

Merlin closed his eyes, like he didn’t want to hear.

That’s why you’re a fool, and that’s where you’re human, too, incubus. He said, “As distasteful as I find it, I am and always will be what the gods called the Wedge of Heaven. I’m a contract, a creation meant to stand above and rule humanity. I still serve the same purpose, even if I’ve judged their original wish to keep humans their pets worthless.

“So, as long as I live, the gods exist. And as long as the gods are remembered, humans won’t think to use their hands for their own glory, and create what I wish to see.”

He cupped Merlin's cheek. “Your petty pleading makes it clear you know that I’ve lived exactly as I wanted. Now I say I’ll die as I want. You might find this Singularity hopeless, but you forget that you, who’ve seen the end, can steer us off that path. And as long as Fujimaru Ritsuka and Mash Kyrielight live, humanity will continue.”

Merlin nuzzled his right hand. “Such a tyrant. I’m not so surprised anymore, though,” he added lightly.

He pinched Merlin’s cheek hard. “Do you understand now, incubus?”

Merlin suddenly gripped his wrist and pressed his lips to the blackened palm. “No. I don’t think you understand my meaning, either.”

Gilgamesh narrowed his eyes. “There’s nothing I don’t understand. I advise you not to say meaningless words, either. This isn’t a dream you can manipulate with the strength of your wishes.”

“I love you,” Merlin said.

Damn him, _damn_ him. Gilgamesh looked away. “Insolent.”

“No matter what you say.” Gilgamesh could hear the warm, soft smile in his voice. “I love you. And I don’t want you to die.”

“Be satisfied the sentiment isn’t returned, but I’ll allow you to leave alive now.”

He shoved Merlin away and sat up, but just as quickly he was pushed to the ground and smothered in a whirl of loose hair while cool lips pressed roughly into his own again. He hardly had any breath left, so he yanked hard on the man’s hair in retaliation, but that only got him pressed further into the grass and Merlin’s cloak—which still carried faintly the scent of flowers—he even tastes like something stupidly sweet like that—fingers dug into his shoulders, and then closed around his nape, and the man was clinging to him...and he was tired, and still angry, and never one to refuse pleasure if it distracted him…. So he committed to looping his arms around Merlin’s neck and parted his lips.

Something cooled in the light breeze on his cheeks.

Gilgamesh opened his eyes, startled despite himself. He pulled away to rub his face, then saw Merlin's eyes on him, wet with tears.

Violet eyes, impossibly warm, impossibly happy. He smiled, and it was damp and full of devotion.

I see, Gilgamesh thought. 

He reached up and cupped Merlin’s cheek, and ran his thumb under his eye. “Why is it that those eyes that would take in everything can only see me?”

“You and I both love humans,” Merlin said, “And then you showed me what it felt like to be human. How could I ever go back to watching the world as an aloof outsider, once I learned that I was more that?”

“You’ve lost yourself,” Gilgamesh said.

“I think, it’s less that, than that I’ve gained a priority. Whatever you think, I still want Goetia defeated.”

“You’re merely lying to yourself if you believe my survival can coexist with Goetia’s defeat.”

“But why! You’ll still disappear from human history if you come to Avalon, and at least we’d be insurance if Chaldea fails—”

“Because of that sentiment.”

Merlin fell silent.

“There will be no insurance. I won’t have humanity survive on our work.”

He buried his face in Gilgamesh's chest, shaking his fluffy head. 

“Listen carefully. Since I don’t trust you to have your priorities straight, I shall order them for you as your king. Your only responsibility is ensuring Ritsuka and Mash’s survival. However they died in your world, make sure it doesn’t happen here.” Having said his piece, Gilgamesh kissed him, lightly as a farewell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas everyone!  
> It is finally almost going to snow where I live


	4. Field of Dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I stewed on this for two weeks! Also changed the rating; there's really nothing much, but I figured just in case.  
> I feel like this is the actual proper MerGil chapter

0.

Fujimaru, Mash and Ana were asleep, so Merlin left the embassy. The night was cool, he wondered if he ought to visit the pretty girls, but then he looked up and caught sight of the light still shining out of the ziggurat. 

He decided to go bother him. Maybe he’d even find him passed out on the throne and full of dreams. So Merlin hummed a random tune and strolled through the streets. At one point a pale stray dog loped out from behind a market stall, nosing for food. Somewhat reminded of Cavall, Merlin sprung a string of strawberries out of the dirt for him.

“Would you also care for a midnight snack?” Merlin called when he reached the top of the stairs. “Oh?” The throne was empty. He glanced around. Finding no one, he ventured curiously forward and momentarily contemplated indulging in clairvoyance. That is, until he found his target curled up on the floor halfway out of the main hall. “Ah, there you are.” He went over and knelt down, reached out to pat the sleeping man’s shoulder, and stiffened.

He was very still.

He’s not breathing. 

No, no, no, focus! Don’t draw a conclusion so quickly! Merlin fought back the urge to recoil and leaned close, finding to his relief that the body before him wasn’t yet a corpse, there was a faint rhythm of breaths. 

Relieved but nowhere near calm, Merlin cupped his cool face in his hands and kissed him, gently gathering the mana on his tongue and passing it to the unconscious king. The other man’s lips were soft and still, but no matter. 

Once it felt enough, Merlin laid him back down, then put a hand on his forehead and closed his own eyes.

It was easy to find him, Gilgamesh was still dreaming that nightmare he sank himself into every time he slept. It was thoroughly useless masochism at this point, though, because his mind was barely coherent enough to register what he was seeing. Merlin decisively cleaved the dream from clairvoyance and tried to wash it clean of pain. Boiling air melted into the whispers of a breeze, flame turned into streaks of sunlight, mud turned to flowers. 

What felt like a few minutes later, red eyes slid open.

“Merlin,” he said.

Well, at least you’ve recovered your wits quickly enough. “I’m here,” he said. They were lying in a sea of wildflowers, a riot of pink and violet and gold as far as they could see. It’d been the first thing that had come to Merlin’s mind.

“I’m not awake, am I.”

“You’d know Mesopotamia better than I would. But it doesn’t look like it, no. I think that flower might be unique to Wales, and I might have made up that other one.” Gilgamesh closed his eyes again. Merlin supposed he’d want an explanation for his interference, so he said, “I would have preferred only to watch, but how can I, with my subject constantly on the verge of disintegration?”

“Oh.” Well, that was an underwhelming reaction, thankfully. But then another thought—despite all his exploits Merlin had never paid attention to it himself, but he’d heard lips could become bruised from kissing. Oh, he prayed silently, I do hope his aren’t, it’s lucky enough he doesn't seem too bothered by my messing with his dream, explaining _that_ might actually be troublesome. I feel like he’s the sort to blow up at trespass like that.

While Merlin was hurriedly calculating ways to slip out of the dream and undo whatever visible damage he’d done to the king’s sacred body outside, Gilgamesh stood up and stretched, wincing as his joints cracked—even in a dream! Then he let out a breath and laughed.

“Ha! To think your abilities could be used this way, I should’ve known.” Merlin glanced up and startled when he found Gilgamesh looking at him strangely. With warmth, and a real interest that he hadn’t gotten since his arrival. 

“Can you quiet that vision?” Gilgamesh asked. Merlin knew what he meant, it had to be that nightmare of their future—futures. And he knew why he’d want to quiet it, too. The voices, the black, smothering smoke and mud and distantly human screaming, Merlin might be best fed by the ugliest of dreams, but he'd felt the overwhelming need to _leave_ that pit of misery from the moment he’d stepped into it. He liked to avoid death and misery, really.

So of course Gilgamesh would ask _him_ to go in and make it bearable. 

The king went on, “I've been using the time I’m asleep to cover my bases, I suppose you’d say. I’d like to be prepared for as many possibilities as I can by the time that day actually comes.”

“Aren’t you worried you’ll miss something important if I cover things up?” Merlin ventured. I’m not _good_ , he thought petulantly. I don’t want to step in there more than I have to.

“You doubt my ability to discern what’s important?” Gilgamesh shot back. “Just quiet that infernal chatter and the screaming, maybe cool the air if you’re able.”

“Isn’t that interfering with your clairvoyance?”

“What I see is what I see, you’re just filtering it. Why are you prevaricating? If you don’t want to do it, just say so.”

“I don’t want to,” Merlin said at once.

“Then I order you to, as your Master,” Gilgamesh announced smugly.

Merlin rolled over in the grass and groaned. Gilgamesh laughed again and nudged him with his shoe. “Come on, mongrel, we have work to do. I suggest you savor it, here’s your chance to work side-by-side with the king.”

Merlin sighed.

Oh well. Once he was resigned to the idea, it didn’t seem so bad. Now I can feast on a king’s dreams with impunity, he thought wryly. 

  
  


❈

  
  


0.

Merlin quickly ducked behind a pillar, emerging only when the servants’ footsteps had faded into the sounds of wind through the halls. It isn’t a peaceful night at all, Merlin mused. Perhaps he won’t be asleep.

But it’d be good if his unruly Master could get some rest, and Merlin still wanted to taste—so he chose to be optimistic and believe that Gilgamesh was dozing.

He took a deep breath and stepped carefully through the shadowy doorway to the king’s bedchamber, then silently pulled aside the curtain.

His care was wasted. The king was sitting cross-legged on his bed, not only wide awake but at maximum productivity, sorting through reports and pulling wet clay tablets out of the Gate of Babylon. He didn’t even glance up when Merlin stepped out of the shadows and raised a hand in greeting.

“What do you want, Merlin?” He bent to press his stylus to the clay. “By the way, since you’re here, fire that for me. Don’t read it.” He snapped his fingers and pointed to one tablet set slightly apart from the others on the tangle of blankets.

Merlin obligingly went over and composed an appropriate spell. “What is it?” He handed him the hardened tablet. 

“Nothing but a few poems that came to me earlier. Anyway, what?” he asked impatiently, tossing that tablet into a corner of the room.

“Nothing much, I just wondered if you’d gone to sleep yet.”

“Ha! Siduri would have had it that way, but I anticipated her nagging and preemptively collected the work she would have hidden. _She_ ’s an average human in form if not mind. She can’t stay up and bother me.”

“It isn’t good to mess with your loyal advisor, you know. Especially when she means so well.”

“She always means well. It doesn’t mean I can actually rest as she insists.”

“Shall I help?”

“You?” At last, Gilgamesh set down the tablet and stylus and looked at him. Merlin straightened his back, standing to attention. “Yes indeed, I _have_ learned to read and write.”

“Congratulations.” The king cocked his head. “You’re acting very strangely tonight.”

“Am I? I’m only trying to be helpful.”

“Idiot, don’t you have any self-awareness? That’s what’s strange.” They stared at each other for a moment. Gilgamesh let out a short breath. “How good is your knowledge of engineering?”

“Hmm, passable, I’d say. I moved some standing stones in Britain and they hailed me as a wizard.”

The Gate of Babylon opened up and spat a stack of tablets onto the carpet. Gilgamesh pointed, and Merlin plopped down on the floor. “Those are beast encounter, structural damage and repair reports from the Northern Wall. Go through them and figure out if there are any areas of the wall with accumulated damage such that the structure might now or soon be unsound.” A few more tablets dropped out of the Gate, along with another stylus. “Summarize concisely.”

“Of course, your Majesty.”

They worked in a comfortable silence after that. Merlin had always hated paperwork and had had his fun coming up with increasingly ludicrous reasons to foist it on others in Artoria’s court, but he found himself less opposed to it now. Probably since it wasn’t his responsibility in this case, he was helping someone else do _their_ work, so anything he got done would be a net positive good deed. Pleasing!

At that point, Gilgamesh spoke up. “What was your king like?” he asked offhandedly.

“Hm?” Merlin startled and then suspected the other man had followed a train of thought similar to his own.

“A little girl, wasn’t she? I saw her sometimes when I wondered about future conditions. I’m curious,” he said, “What kind of king you created.” “Artoria.” Merlin leaned back. “Hmm, well, she was nothing like you.” Then he frowned. “No, that’s not quite right. She had a very strong sense of duty, and I think you do, too.”

Gilgamesh let out an undignified snort. 

“She had a will like yours, too. As long as she believed she was right. But she was too kind to believe that through everything.” 

“I am unkind, then?” 

Merlin peered up, Gilgamesh was grinning.

“I believe you are,” he replied. “And I think you take pride in refusing to be kind.” He took in the shine of those scarlet eyes. “Conversely, I created a king who took pride in gentleness, who would forgive her adulterous wife and her friend just because she loved them. A king who, near death, would look at the ruins of her kingdom and think, this was my fault, and I will make this right by erasing myself.”

“Do you think she was right?” Gilgamesh had set down his work.

Merlin tapped his stylus against the tablet in his hand. “I think it was good of her to love her people, and to try to care for them.”

Gilgamesh laughed dryly. “A human trying to be a god.”

“A god?”

“Yes. That’s what a god is, a 'good’ one. A protector and provider who asks for nothing in return, and not only that, who thinks they can cheat tragedy.”

“So you think she was wrong, then?”

“She was.”

Merlin waited.

“Humans know they’ll encounter pain and loss. They understand that kingdoms flourish and fall. In choosing to swaddle them in her care rather than guide them, she did her people a disservice.”

“She loved them,” said Merlin.

“So?” The retort was sharp, but Gilgamesh seemed to see something in his face, and asked, “Do you grieve for her?”

“Hm? Oh, no,” Merlin said softly. “Unfortunately, such a feeling is beyond me. Though I do sometimes wonder if I’m lucky that’s so.”

Gilgamesh frowned. “Beyond you?”

“I’m no human, you remember.”

The king’s lips twisted incredulously. “You're more human than I am.”

Merlin blinked, then realized what he meant. Oh. Blood percentages. “I suppose I am. But incubi aren’t like gods. They’re baser, simpler creatures. Phantoms, really.”

A snort. “You make much more trouble than a phantom.”

Merlin wanted to tell him the truth, but hesitated. He clearly didn’t believe him. Yet, for no good reason, Merlin wanted to tell him, the simple, clean truth. So he did. “I’m good at pretending. That’s all.”

Gilgamesh’s brow creased. “Then why did you lock yourself into a tower after you realized what was going to happen to the king and kingdom you made?”

“It was too much trouble to leave.”

The words hung in the air. Then Gilgamesh said, “You’re right.” He waved a hand. “I tire of this. You can go now.” 

For some reason his voice was tight with anger.

Merlin said, “I’m sorry.” It seemed like the right thing to say. He didn’t really want to leave, and he still had work to do, didn’t he? “Would you like a different story?” he ventured. Gilgamesh went on writing stiffly. “Hmm,” Merlin rubbed his chin theatrically. “Oh, how about this! I saw a Grail War recently, a coworker of ours was in it. It’s a pretty short and simple story, too, well tailored to late-night overtime, don’t you think?”

“Where are the other incubi?” Gilgamesh cut in, instead. Though he was still refusing to look at Merlin.

“Other incubi?” At that question, he really had to think for a moment. “Gone the same way as your gods, I suspect. I didn’t really pay much attention. I think I lived around humans most of my early life.”

“Then how do you know they lacked feelings like grief?”

“It’s common knowledge of the species. And it was obvious to me that _I_ lacked cares like that, after interacting with humans so much.”

Gilganesh snorted again. “You never considered the idea that that might simply be a defect in your personality? There is such a condition among humans called being emotionally stunted.” 

“Well, my nature _is_ my personality. Because the other half of me is incubus, I can’t help but absorb behaviors and sensations from other people. Even if I wanted to try forging my own independent 'personality,’ I couldn’t, unless I starved myself. As is, what you see is the personality I’ve instinctively developed to make people listen to me and not kill me.”

“Are you sure your supposedly artificial personality doesn’t make people want to kill you?” Gilgamesh said, sounding faintly amused now. 

Alright, either he’s accepted my explanations or he's decided to ignore them completely and I’m his new pet clown, or the ant hill he pokes. “I’m annoying, but would they _really_ kill me? And I think a degree of flippant arrogance is only natural for the mighty,” he said, giving Gilgamesh a splendid smile.

“Don’t lump me in with you.”

“Eh?”

“I’m born to be above all others. You’re just an unfairly talented mongrel who picks up and tosses away responsibilities on whim.”

“Hey, that’s slander, I haven’t tossed away any responsibilities here, have I!”

“No,” he conceded, “But that’s just because the stakes are too high, and nothing’s gone wrong enough for you to feel the barest hint of guilt.”

“I don’t feel guilt.”

“Then you're blinder than either of us thought. Don’t try to deny it, your king tried to be a god because you couldn’t tell how it felt to live like a human and still thought you could raise a human child.”

Then are you saying it was my fault? Merlin demanded silently, Are you saying you’d know better? And then, because he couldn’t ease the words out of his mouth, Merlin realized that he did, himself, think the man above him knew better. He didn’t want to debate this anymore because he’d end up in the wrong.

What kind of person are you! I’ve never listened to anyone—why do I listen to you?

Meanwhile the king went on sorting tablets, looking perfectly stern except for the barest, satisfied twitch of his lips, like he knew exactly what Merlin was thinking.

“You really make everything your business, don’t you?” Merlin said.

“The world’s my garden.”

  
  


❈

  
  


0\. 

Ishtar chose to raid the royal gardens this time, for whatever goddessish reason. Maybe she just wanted to blow off some steam and didn’t particularly want to pick a fight, but at the same time wanted desperately to destroy something of Gilgamesh's. As it happened, Merlin was also raiding the gardens in his own way, plucking fruits and vegetables and enchanting a few plants to mature more nicely here and there. 

“You’re that cambion,” Ishtar said. Her fury seemed to melt off when supplanted by a new curiosity. She hopped gracefully to the ground, her feet making no sound in the thick soil. 

“Goddess Ishtar, it’s a pleasure.” Merlin offered a greeting without stopping his work.

She peered at his basket. “The idiot king of Uruk has assigned you to his vegetable patch?” she inquired disdainfully. 

“Not really. I just thought I’d make a little something for his majesty so that he doesn't starve himself to death. Well, so far as I can with the ingredients at hand.”

“Huh.” She squinted at him. “You’re more conscientious than you look.”

“I’ve only been left idle since Fujimaru’s working. Manual labor doesn’t suit me.”

Ishtar turned up her nose. “Looks a futile effort, though. That idiot’s still providing magical energy to you, isn’t he? He’s still going to starve another way.”

“I’m offended! I’ve got a good enough mana pool on my own. I’d even share if he’d let me.”

“Wouldn’t you like that.”

He paused and imagined it. “Well yes, I would. Wouldn’t you?”

She reeled back. “No, I’d kill him!”

“Haha! And say 'he had his chance?’” 

“He _did.”_

“He’d do his best to kill you first.”

“Of course he would—but,” she huffed, “‘Do his best.’ See, even you don’t think he could win,” she said pointedly, “Idiot.”

“Of course. And that’s what’s lovely about him,” Merlin declared, capping his basket with satisfaction.

 _“Lovely?”_ She practically hissed out the word.

“Mm. I’m nothing but an observer in humanity's garden, so I don’t have much right to comment, but I think it’s beautiful, the way he always thinks he’s right. So he’ll take on anything, fight anyone, bear any sin, even if he’ll die, even if he’ll be alone. And I think you think the same of him, too, in some twisted way. Why else do you keep coming back and checking on him?”

Ishtar stopped. Curious, he glanced at her and found her staring at him with uncharacteristically earnest calculation. “You’re in love with him.”

Merlin expected it to strike him more violently, those words. Isn't that how it goes, usually? Someone calls you out for falling in love. Quickening of the heart, your face heats up, or you’re plunged into the overwhelming sensation of adoration. 

He did a quick scan of his senses, all stable. He still felt coolly calm. I do think I _like_ him, he concluded after this examination, but “love” is going a bit far. It’d be disingenuous to pretend I know what that feels like. I’d venture she’s projecting feelings she still has for him onto me. So he replied, somewhat petulantly, “Oh. I guess I’ll trust your judgement, then, since you’ve experience with that sensation.”

Now Ishtar reddened (see, that _does_ happen!) “I do not! I only proposed—prop—propos...ed because it made sense, and he was promised to the heavens from the start! I’m the Mistress of Heaven, he’s the gods’ grip on earth, it’s only natural.”

“Alright, and I’m half an incubus.”

“I’m serious! Anyway, you, you’d better give up,” she said bluntly.

He felt a twinge of annoyance at that. “It seems interesting, though,” he retorted. He’d never had any intention of pursuing the sensation she’d identified, but now that she’d turned around and told him not to, he kind of wanted to. Is this what they call being contrary?

“That idiot doesn’t know how to like anyone anymore. I don’t think you know how to like anyone, either. It’ll be ugly.”

"Could you be… looking out for him?”

“As if! I’m looking out for all the other humans.”

“A minute ago you asked me to feed him.”

“I _did_ _not_! I was seeing if you were being a proper servant, if I should let you live after I kill him! He’s a sick bastard! You know, he threatened to tax my mountain. My territory! Yes, that's why I came in the first place, you burn some of _his_ things—”

“I thought you said all of Uruk was your territory,” Merlin said, deciding it was probably proper to take the king’s side if he was in love with him.

“Of course it is, but _he_ —”

“Yes, she did, but you’ll have to forgive her, her memory’s hardly better than a beetle’s,” came a familiar drawl. 

“You!”

Sneering at her, Gilgamesh stopped next to Merlin and crossed his arms. Merlin didn’t even bother asking why he’d come out, obviously he was bored and wanted to pick a fight with Ishtar. Really, they were made to hate each other. 

Merlin decided to hand him some ammunition. “She says I love you.”

Gilgamesh blinked, looking genuinely taken aback. Merlin blinked, too, perplexed.

He’d expected Gilgamesh to lose it, either laugh himself into shooting at her for maximum amusement or fly into a rage at the idea that someone had the audacity to be in love with him and someone else had the audacity to say it. Instead, well, Gilgamesh did glare at Ishtar, but his tone wasn't as aggressive as usual. “That one doesn't have feelings,” he told her dryly. 

She let out a scornful laugh, “Is that so! Ha, but you should've seen him talking about you, one might even think you were some kind of martyr.”

Gilgamesh peered at Merlin. “Is that so?”

“Isn’t it natural to praise the king?” Merlin said noncommittally.

“Anyway, you two’d better not do anything stupid and ruin the battlefront, keep your priorities straight,” Ishtar said archly.

Gilgamesh yanked Merlin’s hair and pulled him into a hard kiss. 

_“Ugh!_ You make me sick!”

“For a goddess of love, you're terribly touchy.” The king wiped his lips and propped his elbow on Merlin’s shoulder, grinning smugly. Merlin, meanwhile, gaped at him, eyes wide discs and his mind a blank. But it was... a pleasant, foreign kind of blank….

Gilgamesh caught him staring and raised an eyebrow. “Shy?”

Merlin marveled at him. “No. But does that mean you love me?”

“That remains to be seen,” Gilgamesh said. “Do you want me to, heartless dream-eater?” 

Merlin swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“You will,” Gilgamesh said with a challenging smirk. “Don’t worry.”

Suddenly he couldn’t stand it. In a hot surge of impulse he grabbed Gilgamesh by his arms and over Ishtar's exclamation and Gilgamesh's own shout he transported them in a cloud of petals and shoved him into the mess of pillows of his bed.

“What’s this?” the king said, glancing idly around his own bedchamber despite the man above him.

“Isn’t this what people in love do?” Merlin said. 

“Is it? Don’t you do it quite a lot regardless?”

Merlin hadn’t known anyone could still be beautiful when so incurably smug. Ah well, he leaned in to that white neck, that’s the way he is. Fingers curled into his hair as he dropped a kiss below his ear, and then his jaw, and then found the corner of his mouth and felt the wry smile under his lips.

“You think—you’ve won something over me, don’t you?” Merlin said thickly, sliding his hand through the wide slits in those flimsy pants.

“Ah, but don’t you feel like you’ve won, too?” Gilgamesh’s breath hitched when Merlin pressed his fingers between his legs.

A little, thought Merlin as he kissed him again.

  
  


❈

  
  


0.

“Don’t,” said Gilgamesh.

So the clairvoyant presence returned. Merlin would’ve been happy that Gilgamesh still deigned to speak to him after his unflattering death in Tiamat’s dream, but the order he gave…. Merlin dug his boot into the flowers at the edge of Avalon. The petals made an ugly smudge on the earth.

“Are you telling me to give up?”

“Surely you’re not foolish enough to believe that.”

“Then why?”

“There’s no point in you coming here. Tiamat is going to destroy this era anyway, now that the last Master is dead. No, humanity will be incinerated, there’s no avoiding it now.”

“King Gilgamesh!”

“It’s the truth. You must know it, too.”

Something was boiling up in his chest now. “If nothing matters, I’ll go, bring you here to Avalon. Surely, between the two of us, and Romani, we can come up with something.” With that he cut off the connection. 

—Why did I do that? He’ll be furious.

But he’d turn me down, and he’s wrong. He doesn't know what I’m capable of.

  
  


❈

  
  


Merlin dropped his staff. Stumbled. 

He despised the disgust that welled up in him. He despised this sight—Gilgamesh’s form, offset, unnatural, the broken stone, Lahmu’s dust—a king should never face such a situation, and he should never be so broken, he was someone who faced everything with a human’s intensity and a god’s arrogance. And Merlin was here. Slow, late, arrogant himself for thinking his will was enough to dispel danger. This wasn’t better at all. Ugly. Disgusting, despicable.

He hadn’t even known he could despise anything. 

“Stupid,” Gilgamesh said softly. 

He could barely hear him. Merlin tried to move his lips to reply, but the words tangled in his mouth—he wanted to vomit.

“You see? I thought you might be negatively affected.”

“Foolish of me to imagine otherwise,” Merlin managed. 

I hate this.

The mud around them burst into flowers, above, the beast towered. The mage knelt beside the king and tried to lift him.

“Merlin.”

He froze.

“Listen to me.”

No. Don’t say it like that. Merlin turned away, a pointless gesture, but he didn’t want to hear—but Gilgamesh grabbed his hair and the grip was so loose and weak that Merlin hated it and he had to look at him, to see his face, so his last impression of him wouldn’t be a hand with all the strength bled out of it— 

Gilgamesh’s eyes were as stern as ever, and his voice was steady. “I order you, by these Command Seals, Merlin, leave. Take the memory of those you watched here, find another time, another place.”

“Another time?” Merlin stiffened.

“Our history ends here, but our memory shouldn’t disappear,” he said, quiet but insistent. And then more softly, “Merlin, reach the happy ending you wish for.”

“But you—!”

The king smiled, proud and bright. “Be well, Magus of Flowers.”

_“Gil—”_

And he was gone, as if scattered by a gentle wind. 

No, Merlin was gone, hurled out by reckless authority as suddenly as he’d been drawn in and filled with the urge—the need—to follow that order— and with far too much, too much disgust and fury. He collapsed, bent over, huddled in the flowers of Avalon in a cloud of petals that might have been ash.

Merlin’s cheeks felt cold. He touched them, and they came away glistening.

How strange, he thought distantly. An incubus does not have such reactions. 

Slowly, he put his hands over his eyes, and fought the urge to scream. Alone, alone. 

He’s not supposed to be gone. He’s supposed to show me, he’s supposed to show _me_ his happy ending, we’re not supposed to fail, he’s not supposed to die—you, not when you were so _bossy_ , not when you said I was wrong about the girl I raised who you never even met and then showed me I was wrong about _myself_ , that I’d want you— 

And Merlin realized.

“I loved him.” But there was no one to tell. “I loved him.” A sensation so hollowing, so wondrous. 

I can love. 

I can want to watch one person alone.

I can want someone so much that I refuse to let go.

He could still feel the tug of the Command Spells, even if he shouldn’t. A powerful summoner, indeed, to be able to affect a mage like him. 

You’re right, in the end. I have to go, I can’t sit here until I burn up myself, I’ll save another world. 

But I'll never be able to wipe off the taint you left on me. The gift you gave me. Maybe I was stupid to go to you, to see, to realize, but the damage was already done, Your Majesty. I’ve drunk from this poison chalice. 

Thank you.

I’m false by nature, but you’ve created this feeling in me that’s too much to be an illusion.

I’ll love you. 


	5. Field of White

6.

Merlin avoided him for a long time after they returned from the Cedar Forest. Or, rather than avoiding, it was more that he stopped insisting on being in Gilgamesh's company, and when he happened to be, whether it was because he was accompanying Ritsuka or because he had to make his own report on Tiamat’s state of mind, he was cooler, simply treating Gilgamesh like he treated everyone else. He stopped intruding on his dreams, which was just as well, since Gilgamesh was getting less sleep now and preferred to have it on his own terms. Even when Gilgamesh died, when he returned from the underworld, he found Merlin ready with a breezy smile. Though, that might have been because something similar had happened in his timeline.

Truth be told, the change wasn’t much of a relief. It seemed too easy. It wasn’t that Gilgamesh lacked faith in his own powers of dissuasion, it was more that Merlin had acted like an insistently sticky piece of caramel for so long that he couldn’t get used to the idea that he would drop off just like that. 

But on the other hand, Gilgamesh didn’t really expect relief from anything anytime soon, and Merlin had essentially good intentions, that he was sure of. So he sorted Merlin to the back of his mind, behind more pressing matters like constructing defenses that might hold against tides of mud. Not that he needed to devote too much attention to that bit of engineering. He was very good at it.

  
  


❈

7.

“Well, I suppose this is goodbye,” Merlin said. “Will you miss me?”

Gilgamesh turned to face him. “We’ll see each other again,” he said.

Merlin blinked. “Oh?”

“I probably won’t remember you, but I have every confidence that you’ll insist upon demonstrating your worth to me again.”

“Alright, alright.”

“Do your job and you’ll have fair reward.”

“Is that a promise of something...?” Merlin’s smile took on a hint of mischief. 

Gilgamesh just settled on the throne and waved him off. “Interpret it however you want, I’ll evaluate your performance once I get to see Chaldea’s records anyway, so you have plenty of time to prepare a celebratory feast or practice begging for mercy.”

“I could prepare a feast in seconds, you know.”

“I’ll have your head if you try to offer me an illusion of a meal.”

“For you! Don’t worry, I’ve had plenty of experience feeding a pupil of mine... though I might be a bit rusty now.” He contemplated this for a moment, cupping his chin. “Hmm, you’re right, I’ve plenty of time to prepare.”

“Goodbye for now, Magus of Flowers.”

“Mm. Goodbye for now, King Gilgamesh.”

  
  


❈

8.

It was quieter, after Tiamat killed him.

Gilgamesh found himself somewhat disappointed. Even if he hadn’t seen him in his dreams of Tiamat’s arrival in Uruk, he’d expected him to have more tricks up his overlong sleeves.

  
  


❈

  
  


9.

Ever since that first vision, he’d been waiting to die, and he had to admit it was a small relief it wasn’t the Lahmu that did it.

The girl Ritsuka’s eyes were bright, anguished and splendidly determined when he found her, hand in hand with Mash Kyrielight, the ziggurat shattering beneath them. What a fool, he said silently. Now, with a look like that, why shouldn't the world bend over backwards to make sure you win? 

He smiled at them.

She reached out desperately, but they fell out of sight, down to Ereshkigal and Tiamat, and he felt his own wounds catching up to him, his vision darkening, the blood rushing in his ears mixing with the rush of the wind and feeling like he was floating even when he knew he was falling. He spared half a second to marvel at how ludicrous the conditions were—in a cloud of rubble!—before he began the incantation one more time, offering up his own flesh.

And then he was looking into a clear blue sky.

All around him the air was fresh again, scattered with blindingly sunlit petals tossed up by a breeze from nowhere. He was too shocked to do anything but sit on that hill of wildflowers and stare into the azure abyss, stiff with disbelief.

  
  


❈

10.

The relief of having succeeded washed over him as a wave of exhaustion, so Merlin could barely summon the will to steady himself on his own arrival and fell unceremoniously into a mouthful of velvety dirt and flowers.

“Ugh!” He spat the stuff out and climbed to his knees, staggering when his head still spun. “Hah!” He coughed, pounding the ground. 

Slowly, his vision settled, but blood still pulsed in his ears. He stood.

A field of flowers stretched out before him, and, as he’d hoped, a white tower hung in the distance. Petals billowed in unseasonal wind, and the blue sky above seemed to fade up into black. 

“Gilgamesh!” 

There was no reply. He cupped his hands around his mouth. _“Gilgamesh!”_ His throat felt like it was about to rip, and there was no reply but the faint rustling of grass and flowers.

Then there was no doubt that king had already gone straight up into the tallest tower.

  
  


❈

11.

Gilgamesh stood, looking out, on the uppermost balcony. When Merlin arrived before him in a panting heap, he turned.

He looked calm enough, hands at his sides, red eyes coolly attentive, his golden hair framed in the pale spring sunlight that seemed to hover in the air through the endless blue.

Ah, he really is beautiful. And to see him, in this place….

Those lips parted. “You took your time.”

“And you, chose, of all places, ah, the very top.”

“So this is where you’ve spent the last thousand years?” Gilgamesh went back to the edge of the balcony and peered down. “I’ve been wondering how you amused yourself all this time without Romani to play with.”

“Oh,” Merlin said, “It’s much more varied than you probably expect. I am a master of illusions, you recall. I can be anywhere and do anything I want.”

“Isn’t that convenient?” Gilgamesh let out a sharp laugh that Merlin didn’t like the sound of, but that was alright. 

I don’t ask for him to like me.

“Yes, it really is. Do you want some tea?”

Spurred on by the sharp glare, Merlin promptly summoned a table and tea set, at which the king sat and crossed his legs. Merlin sat down across from him and poured him a steaming cup.

Gilgamesh picked up the teacup and held it level with his eyes. Examining it, for what? Flaws, discolored decoration, or impossible perfection? You underestimate me, my dear king. “As I’m apparently no longer trusted to understand the circumstances and make decisions of my own,” Gilgamesh said softly, “I’ll ask you. Is this a dream, or your real Avalon? I suspect you haven’t had us intrude on an alternate version of yourself.”

“Oh, never. That’d be too awkward. No, this is my Avalon.”

He took a sip. “How?” 

“Most things are possible if you have enough mana,” Merlin said. “I don't have to power Chaldea anymore. And you’ve repeated the same nightmare, that nightmare is happening now, and the distinctions between nightmares and reality really blur near death, don’t they? So—”

“Despite what I told you, over and over—you presume to trick me!”

“Why am I always the one who has to trust you?”

“I’ll kill you if you don’t release me.”

“So you don’t really want to kill me, you haven’t done it yet.”

“Of course I don't!”

“You can’t anyway.”

“I can shatter your body. I can destroy this garden and you in it, chain your mind in curses until you’d rather be dead.”

“Don’t you trust me at all?”

“Why don't you believe in Ritsuka?” 

“It’s your fault,” Merlin said. “I believed in you, and then you both died.”

Gilgamesh flung his teacup into his face. The magician dodged easily and the cup shattered on the railing of the balcony, disintegrating into shining dust. Gilgamesh glared at him, channeled all his fury and willed him to show any sign of contrition. There’s no way I judged wrongly.

“Such a pure, base creature,” he said acidly. “For someone who plays puppet master with everyone else’s lives, you’re still quite subject to your own petty impulses.”

To hide away when you fail your student; to drink, to harass beautiful women. The moment you realize you can love, possess that feeling that suffuses all the great legends, you cradle that love close to yourself. Any other time Gilgamesh would’ve found him fascinating, would have enjoyed prodding him, getting close to him and seeing for himself what someone so used to pretending could become. 

“You are wasting my time, incubus,” he said.

“We have all the time in the world,” said Merlin.

“If I don’t go to them, that ‘world’ will be worthless,” Gilgamesh said. “And I don't care what you think about that, by now it’s been amply proven that we have irreconcilable differences.”

“Ah, you see?” Merlin sighed, setting down his teacup. “Even when you’re furious with me, I’m happy.” He was smiling now. “I don’t need to understand you and you don’t need to understand me, not fully, but we can make up for each other’s inhumanity.”

Ah, Gilgamesh groaned inwardly. Merlin had been right not to flinch at his threats. Even if he turned the magician’s body into meat mush, he didn’t know how to get out of this place—he’d spent his time learning more useful skills than dream-kidnapping!—so fighting Merlin was useless, and so the only way out was to talk sense into him, and yet? This is what he’s going off of? The thesis is this inane?

Never one to withhold spite, Gilgamesh grabbed Merlin’s teacup and took the pot for himself, too. 

“There’s no need to make up for your inhumanity, you fool,” Gilgamesh said. “We’re not human. As much as humans are short-sighted and mortal, we’re a step removed, and wiser. Whatever I did to you in some other timeline, you were probably already perfect before that.”

Merlin’s lips twitched wryly, bitterly. “Perfect?”

“Complete, with a way of life suitable to your skills and desires.”

“Then I can blame you again, can’t I, for ruining me?”

“I’ll allow it,” Gilgamesh said.

That successfully brought him to silence—or, no, he raised his eyes to meet Gilgamesh's, and there were not in the least surprised, but determined, almost wishful.

“If you want to go,” the half-incubus breathed. “Please convince me.”

Gilgamesh, about to pour himself another cup, paused. “I’ve already told you everything I believe. You’re not stupid. If you were going to be convinced, you already would be, and if you’re not already convinced, nothing else I say will work. Review my words and accept reality.”

Merlin said, “You could say you won’t lose.”

“I’ve already assured you.”

“Help me believe you.”

“I can’t,” Gilgamesh said truthfully.

Merlin lowered his head. “Why do I care so much?” He asked him quietly. “What’s the point?”

“There isn’t any point,” said Gilgamesh replied softly. “All pleasures are this way. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

“Yet so many would give up their lives for this feeling, for the ones they direct this feeling at.”

“That pleases them.”

Merlin curled his fingers into his bangs, so Gilgamesh lost sight of his face. “Oh, how lucky I am that the one I’ve become attached to always knows everything.”

 _"Tch,_ are you mocking me?”

The magician looked up, and his smile was radiant. “Not at all.”

“Then watch your tone more carefully—”

Merlin interrupted him with a gentle laugh. “Tricked you.” And he raised a hand, and waved, and the dream—for it had been a dream, broke like glass. The sky shattered, revealing only blackness above, and the tower they were sitting in erupted into a sea of flowers.

As the king above men, Gilgamesh had impressive willpower, but in that instant he felt absolutely no need to put any of that to use and flew at Merlin, summoning his axe, and when it wouldn’t come, clamping his fingers around Merlin’s neck. Obviously, one of them had been keeping more fit, though, since the magician managed to wrench his arms away and kept his grip on them. At the same time he kicked Gilgamesh in the shin and then stepped on his feet, leaving them locked in an awkward stalemate.

He grinned. “My pride wouldn't be able to take it if I didn't get the upper hand just once.”

“How _dare_ you step on—” 

“I wanted to say, too…,” Merlin went on, ignoring his protests but suddenly looking so earnest, so somber, that even Gilgamesh fell silent. “Is the king of Heroes so selfless as to care about the residents of another universe, mere possibilities?

“No, I think you lied. You simply didn’t want me to die alone.”

Merlin let go of him, but didn’t step back.

“And I haven’t, Your Majesty.”

In a blink Gilgamesh was back in the collapsing ziggurat, the summoning incantation at his lips.

And a touch, and a sweet flow of another’s mana into the spell.

He felt him disappear, a moment before he, too, lost all sensation.

  
  


❈

❈

❈

  
  


12.

Romani had a funny voice, Gilgamesh decided. For the incarnation of Solomon, blessed by God, he had a fascinating tendency to descend into agitated wailing when met by minor stresses beneath a certain threshold of exigency. What a nervous wreck. That’s why I’m inclined to sneer at you, you know. You and that Beast both. But I suppose you're doing your best. 

Anyway, Romani was making a lot of noise. 

Finally fed up, Gilgamesh forced open his eyes, kicked off his silken sheets (freshly retrieved from his own treasury, naturally) and threw open his door to howl down the hall, “Archaman, I will _have your head!”_

Out here he could hear the voices much more clearly. “Finally, I’m calling _you!"_ Romani shouted back.

“Solve it yourselves, whatever it is!”

“No, you solve it!”

Gilgamesh’s blood ran hot and poor Bedivere, passing by, stumbled in shock at his expression. “How dare you command me!”

A different voice cut hastily into their long-distance confrontation, harried but firm, “King Gilgamesh, Your Majesty, please,” and here was a pause, probably a low “uh,” followed by, “I’m terribly sorry to disturb your rest, but it’s not really a problem like Doctor Roman is making it seem! You might even find it amusing?”

His fury cooled noticeably. Which then annoyed him anew. Why am I listening to that little mongrel? ...Ah well. Satisfying himself with just one vengeful kick to the wall for his lost sleep, he marched down to the command room.

And then had to admit she was right. It was a rather amusing sight.

A pale figure with far too much silvery-white (faintly rainbow-hued?) hair was sprawled in front of one of the workstations, wailing and occasionally pounding the desk while Romani sniped at him and tried to drag him off the console.

 _"What in the world is this?!"_ wailed the man Gilgamesh was pretty sure was the immortal magician Merlin. “Romani, I tell you, I really don't know about anything that happened before I got summoned _right in front of Beast II_ _,_ which was a thoroughly unpleasant debut, I have to say—but I had an awful dream and no—get off me! I’m checking—I just want to see if it’s true—”

“Yes, you behaved like that! You wouldn’t get off him, it was the most disgusting—” 

“Yes, disgusting, I can’t _believe_ I’d act like that—”

Gilgamesh decided it was time to discipline the children. “Alright,” he called sharply, clapping his hands, “Archaman, explain why you have decided _I’m_ supposed to solve 'it,’ whatever it is.”

They both turned to him, which left Merlin craning his neck with one hand clawing a keyboard and the other smashing Romani’s nose and Romani’s arms firmly tangled in several loops of Merlin’s hair.

“Now that his Majesty’s here, can we lock them in a room, for science?” said da Vinci out of nowhere. Ritsuka shushed her.

“Merlin apparently had a dream and panicked enough to come all this way to examine our records of the Seventh Singularity,” Romani said flatly, “And now he’s embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed, I’m appalled at this version of myself.”

“That’s the same thing!” 

Gilgamesh looked more closely at the screen in front of Merlin and found it was displaying a number of text files and playing several videos, most of which featured Merlin and an unmistakable figure… himself.

Alright, he hadn’t bothered to examine Chaldea's records of Uruk past their data on Tiamat and Kingu despite, well fine, in pure spite of Ritsuka’s infernal eyebrow-wiggling. Before their renewed squabbling manifested too many flying limbs, he shoved the two of them away and took over the station. The room fell silent, like everyone was holding their breath as he watched for a while, systematically scanning all the reputedly scandalous material.

At last, he shifted and pinned Merlin with a judgmental look.

Merlin swallowed. “I disavow my behavior in that setting. I seem to have been infected with some very strange things. Are you sure the mana in the Age of Gods is safe for incubi?”

With an idle tilt of his head, Gilgamesh redirected the query to Romani, who coughed, grimaced exasperatedly, and then redirected the query to da Vinci, who said, “Yeah, probably.”

“Ah.”

Gilgamesh leaned back in his chair. “What else do you have to say?”

“Did you give me some strange command when you summoned me? Like use your Command Seals to order me to adore you?”

“Insolence! Would I need to?!”

“Ah, no.”

The room fell silent again. Ritsuka shifted from foot to foot impatiently, Mash stared at the two of them while absently dusting off Romani’s coat, and much of the present staff bent over their work in studied ignorance.

Finally, Merlin seemed to get fed up with squirming for general entertainment and surreptitiously started dematerializing from the feet up, which, Gilgamesh decided, was a delightfully pathetic and indecisive move for a man with the self-confidence to try to call a king _his_ , so he shot to his feet and grabbed the mage’s arm, grinning at him. "Rejoice, Magus of Flowers. I, the king, have decided you shall entertain me!”

“What? Wait, Your Majesty,” Merlin stammered out as he was dragged off, “What does that mean?!”

“That’s your problem to figure out, isn’t it?”

_“Unfair!”_

“Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> I wrote myself into a corner fifty times over the course of this story, and I’ll probably never be able to look at it again, but now that it’s out of my system… please stay tuned for some completely different MerGil..!?

**Author's Note:**

> So I love these two  
> /sets this down and flees


End file.
